The Hilarious Way Ellen DeGeneres Had To Help Fix The Ending Of Finding Dory

Part of the reason why animated movies take so long to make is because they are brought through a process where stories are built up, then broken down, then built up again, and then broken down again. A side effect of this, of course, is that last minute changes do come up. This is a bigger issue when the alterations require some extra work from one of the movie’s big voice stars. This was a situation that the crew behind Finding Dory recently found themselves in, and ultimately they were actually forced to do a recording session with Ellen DeGeneres in a closet during production of her talk show.

Director Andrew Stanton told this funny story while speaking at length about the making of Finding Dory during an early press day held a few weeks ago in Monterey, CA (the main setting of the film). During a roundtable interview with a small group of film journalists – including myself – the filmmaker was asked about last minute changes that found their way into the movie, and Stanton explained that he had a new idea for the movie’s wrap-up very recently, employing an idea that had developed early in production but was cut due to some other changes. Getting this scene animated and finalized required extra work from Ellen DeGeneres and Albert Brooks, however, and the former proved to be a bit of a challenge to get into a proper studio. Said Stanton,

Now it all looks different and it plays different, but it’s going to require six lines from Ellen and five lines from Albert and we can’t get them anymore. So we had to go down to her show and get her in the middle of the day and pull her to a closet really quickly with a microphone in between meetings and get five lines.

Of course, Andrew Stanton couldn’t provide any more details about the scene that was being fixed – it is the very end of Finding Dory, after all – but this definitely does make for a funny bit of trivia. Because the folks at Pixar are technological geniuses, audiences probably won’t even realize that some of Dory’s final lines in the movie were recorded in a closet, but those of you who read this story can go into the movie and listen for the sound of business office humoring in the background or perhaps the sound of a falling dustpan.

After 13 years of waiting, Finding Dory will finally be hitting theaters later this year on June 17th, and you can be sure that we will have a ton more content related to the film here on CinemaBlend, so be sure to stay tuned!